To be totally honest here, since I don't have any traditional education in music I only tangentially understand the way you use the words from context and what I know about music, so I can't offer a lot of insight outside of what emotion it evokes or how I would approach it from an engineering/production/performer side.

I tend to think of every individual note pattern and melody that follows from it as a thread in the song, even those which form the structure of a chord, and as it happens it follows that each one must have a beginning and an end. To introduce a new thread, one must tie into the bar preceding effectively. In some situations, it would be appropriate to sound out a thread and then let it fall to rest with its chord, often using a down or up note to tie into the bar following.

I suppose that in situations like this, you may find that there are significant gaps in the weave because the writer was intentionally keeping some parts separate for contrast, as it happens perhaps it was originally written for multiple instruments but has now joined and so I would assume you are hearing new potential ways to elaborate on a hidden or implied pattern. I think your sequence definitely works but I would use it apart from the original if I were to join them together in composition, perhaps after re-introducing the theme in a new echo of the first movement.

Game music suffers in that it often must begin all at once, and so this track's missing the opportunity to introduce each thread with care that would make the songwriter's choices clearer and easier to follow. With a proper introduction, those gaps you're filling might have made more sense.

This has been very enlightening, especially as I come from what I suppose is a strange background in regards to sound. When working with other musicians, I would often show them a basic rhythm structure and some chords that I would like them to use, and leave it intentionally incomplete or simplistic so they can use their skill and tact to build into my song. This use to work well because I wrote in a very brutalist format, treating loops and fills I'd written as blocks. I managed to make a lot of useful sounds and sequences by just writing a few base elements and then creating new sequences to compliment that base structure, and I would only be generating the blocks to build something larger later on.

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying

Yeah, I gotta apologize for that bc I have a bad habit of going into technical jargon because ever since I learned the terminology from class I don't know how else to refer to the elements I'm talking about in not-obnoxiously-technical terms. I like talking to you about music and sound though because applying technical knowledge to music isn't super meaningful if it doesn't sound good - end result is to evoke a response right? Doesn't matter if something is "harmonically" correct if it doesn't sound the way you want it to; the point of applying technical knowledge is to understand what makes the thing work. I can throw around all the terms I want but hearing a second opinion about how it sounds - from someone with hefty practical experience - is equally valuable.

I like what you said about introducing the elements first. I think the progression they have is a simpler introduction but I want to experiment with mixing my alterations in to see what that sounds like. The fun thing about arrangements of game music for live performance is we have more freedom to experiment with that kind of thing... Thank you for the input and perspective as always!

Nah no problem, I don't easily have a way to express what you wanted readily available anyway. I think the parts you've altered make way for a good remix/rearrangement of the source. If you would like to grow it into something different, I'm sure it would have a place with an audience like OCRemix.

I've made similar changes to support a harmony before (I believe I showed you how one track's addition of a supporting guitar changed the mood drastically from foreboding to generally more positive) and been very surprised to find the results were tonally very different.

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying

So I "finished" a song for the first time in basically ever. By which I mean I really need to just consider this piece done so I can move on and work on other music; I did some editing and balancing and it's still rather novice but at least now it feels more complete than the last version I uploaded:

time to move on to something new. best way to improve is to keep making new **** and figuring out what works and what doesn't, after all.

((oh, and to follow up on saria's song, I made a version with just a couple slight alterations to the original arrangement - toning down my original HARMONY ASSIGNMENT VERSION somewhat - and I think I like this best. I like the variety: https://soundcloud.com/user-591153033/s ... nt/s-llYz8 ))

My girlfriend asked me to compose a simple background piece for an audio drama she's working on in school, and I also have a lot of untapped ToS feelings, so I decided to use the latter as inspiration for the former. It's pretty simple, not that involved, and more or less just the same thing over and over, but I was going for something nice and simple so that works out. Definitely won't pretend I wasn't feeling the Layton OST when I wrote this.

I may or may not expand this into a more complete piece later (or at the very least record the string part on cello lmao), but for now this is exactly what I was looking to make and is what was needed for the project, so here is this! dem midi violas mmmmmmmmm

e: lmao she basically just got back to me today like "well this is really pretty but it doesn't work as a track in an audio drama because it draws the ear too much. you wrote a video game bgm. thanks anyway"

TIME TO THROW MY BUDDING CAREER AS A PODCAST COMPOSER OUT THE WINDOW but this is good because video game tracks are what I want to do anyway

Bump. Someone asked me to reorchestrate this song from Paper Mario: Color Splash for their Earthbound fan game:

[MEDIA=youtube]qxUfwEvP7KY[/MEDIA]

This has been a lot of fun because it's actually my first experience composing in code. (Luckily, there are enough Earthbound fan mods out there that there's a user-friendly program specifically for writing music into Earthbound mods.) I'm very comfortable in my western music notation bubble, so this has been an interesting way to expand my horizons a bit. Attaching a screencap because MUSIC LOOKING LIKE THIS IS VERY FOREIGN AND COOL FOR ME:

I'm literally re-writing the music in the game itself, but I recorded what it sounds like for reference. Disclaimer: I spent almost all day learning the language of this program, so I only managed to write the 10-second organ intro before running out of creative juice. Harmony is 100% picked out & transcribed by ear. Here's what it sounds like:

It's that time of year again -- the Global Game Jam! I've had about 1 hour of sleep in the past 24 hours, but who needs sleep when you have a game to make!

I'm composing 3 tracks (+all other audio) for our game this year. Two of them are easily the best I've ever composed. Here's one of them as a sneak peak; not posting all of them until the game's done, which will probably be another ~30 hours:

I wanted to make a theme for Mithos Yggdrasill, idealistic hero of the ancient war; to be contrasted with the minor-key theme we have for his 4,000-year-later self. As if his villain theme we hear in the game is a twisted and sad rendition of what used to be this hopeful and happy song. My goal is that listening to this retroactively changes how the minor version sounds. I had a lot of fun with this and it also made me very emotional and, i just love tales of symphonia guys,,

[QUOTE="Apollo the Just, post: 1624539, member: 30977"]hey look what i spent all day recording because im obsessed with the mother series: tadaaaaaaa[/QUOTE]
Tumblr is being a jerk and won't let me listen. Got a direct link?

Also I finally downloaded Magia Wave I'll try it out sometime soon!

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying

^ we have made a **** of changes improving Magia Wave (I did more work making the sound effects and bgm balance better, and our artists did a lot of color and camera fixes) but still haven't uploaded the final version, I will link when we do though!